Spanish Language Chapter

Period covered by report: Jan-Dec 2007
Contact name: Jorge Sanz, Lorenzo Becchi and Víctor Olaya

This text is a short version of the bigger article  written by OSGeo Spanish group for the Girona meeting.

Key Accomplishments

Community support

Mailing list: The center of our activity, like for any other OSGeo group, is the mailing list. Thank to this tool, all subscribers can interact discussing, resolving technical doubts, promoting local events, chatting about interesting news, links and so on. Regardless their location and technical skills, anyone can ask for help about geomatics and FOSS4G software.

wiki: We have set up a category for Spanish contents called Español. Every content we have to write about finds its place in the wiki and everybody is invited to contribute or share his opinion (using talk pages). We use it to plan and manage the Free GIS Book, the contents, the authors subscription and so on.

OSGeo site translation: It's very important to maintain and update the Spanish version of the OSGeo site. Coordinated with the Website Committee, the translation of the most important pages of the web is completed.

Presentations

FOSS4G2007: Lorenzo Becchi presented the initial movements of the Local Chapter at FOSS4G in Victoria, Canada.
3rd gvSIG meeting: The Local Chapter was presented to the gvSIG community in their annual meeting.
2nd Free GIS meeting in Girona: This is the annual meeting for Spanish FOSS4G users and developers, where this Local Chapter was formed.

Free GIS Book

The Free GIS Book is one of the most important initiatives of the Spanish Local Chapter. With the leadership of Víctor Olaya, a group of authors have organized a common effort to create a book about Geographical Information Systems from the theoretical point of view, agnostic of any specific software and covering the main areas of that discipline. This is a Free content project, using a Creative Commons license (2.5 CC-BY-SA) and supported by OSGeo infrastructures.

Collaborative structure

We have elected a PSC and a set of rules to participate in the book. Every chapter has a main author, responsible of coordinating their contents with other authors as usual in collaborative books.

Parts

The book has six main parts, everyone with several chapters:

Introduction: First concepts and fundamental ideas about GIS, its history and a global overview
Data: Geographic data particularities, representation models, data storing, data bases and quality among other topics
Processes: Formulae and algorithms related with geographical analysis from simple queries to network analysis or terrain models algorithms
SDI: The Spatial Data Infrastructures play an important role in the way we use and produce data
Technology: This part presents the main types of GIS softwares, their characteristics and technical fundamentals as well as the main representatives of any type.
Applications: How GIS are applied to specific fields. How previous topics apply to any case, and how other particular elements also support that fields.

Tools

The book is being written in Spanish, using LaTeX as editing tool and OSGeo SVN repositories as a version control.

Areas for Improvement

We should to present OSGeo in more areas as geomatic meetings, journals and events.
We should to formalize the Local Chapter electing a PSC.
We should contact with other Spanish spoken communities related with specific projects.

Opportunities to Help

We are looking for more translators for:
- OSGeo website
- OSGeo flyers and marketing stuff
- The Journal
- ...
People to join and debate on the mailing lists!
If you want to start to translate into Spanish of one of the OSGeo projects, we can help as bridge to the project community
Present OSGeo projects in your local community

Outlook for 2008

Formalize the Local Chapter
Improve our presence in South America
Keep going the Free GIS Book project
Improve translations

Spanish Chapter Report 2007